


birdcage

by dollyfish



Category: Black Clover - 田畠裕基 | Tabata Yuki
Genre: Childhood, Dysfunctional Family, Family Dynamics, Gen, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 07:09:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17157542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollyfish/pseuds/dollyfish
Summary: here’s gold, here’s flesh, here’s a person with two eyes like a bright, vast galaxy. you’ve never even believed in eyes so honest, and you’re thirteen, you ought to have some proper experience with the world outside the mansion. but you’re also a Vaude, and you don’t.you’re facing another Vaude, and you think- just a flicker, but it’s there- you think he pities you.





	birdcage

**Author's Note:**

> for Black Clover Secret Santa.  
> merry christmas Nicole! i'm so glad somebody else loves langris and finral as much as i do, hope i did them justice with this brief fic. langris is an amazing character to de-structure and i had so much fun with his point of view, especially when it concerns his undoubtedly complicated childhood and his brother, so i might try this again in the future. but without further ado, enjoy!

 

 

 

 

Vaude is your family’s name. (a good name, though not quite the best. this isn’t the place.)

but what’s really important, you’re mana’s child.

your brother only has a name. 

  
  
  
  
  


the ceremony sizzles with it. 

magic, you would think, constitutes the essence of materials, from living entities to each single stone, it penetrates the fabric of things, ending and unending, it’s imprinted in your molecules. it’s the simple way to explain why mana springs from your fingers and you feel deeply entwined to a concept so  _ other _ from you, but pliant like silk to your whims. a child loved by mana knows he’s loved before he learns to walk. 

but this, right here, this moment, goes beyond that. all you know about magic is outmatched. outlawed. incomplete. 

tomes and books of every size, kind, state of preservation swirl around the vast space, as if they’re being summoned by a myriad different voices, and others, so many others, are jumping out from the shelves. it looks confusing and wild and magnificent, and there’s this intensely overwhelming pull from a dimension you can’t quite understand yet. your brother’s in the middle of it, and that’s an expression you’ve never seen him wear. the rest hits you now. your  _ brother _ ’s standing there. this is for your Brother.

but  _ you _ ’re Mana’s child. 

you’re Mana’s child and yet somehow the thought that you might not be a unique piece to this immense and divine Existence always averted you until now.  you clench your teeth and stand on the sidelines, under a cloak of shadows, while the whole world readjusts and re-stitches itself inside you. 

it’s a simple process. highlight it. memorise it. mage dies, grimoire fades away. there are reasons for this, you suppose, dark reasons, higher reasons; grimoire is flesh, blood, perhaps a frail, shuddering scrap of soul. the pages testify each a very real appendix of the mage for whom they’re written.

here goes the difficult question, the mirrored argument. what is a mage hollowed of their grimoire? it’s not like cutting off a finger, it’s not like pulling out their eyes either. it’s so much worse. you wonder if that’s what gods can do. 

finral makes his way across the room, to you, out of breath, out of words, too excited to help himself from skipping the last bit. and he’s grinning, like he’s actually happy or something equally ludicrous. then maybe he’ll tell you what it feels like to hold a grimoire, maybe he’ll ask you to be glad for him, maybe he’ll let himself believe this changes anything. you’re pale-faced, tongue-tied in a way that never keeps him away from your wrath. 

it should. it should.

your brother might just be as slow-witted as everyone thinks. 

you watch that grin melt and blend back into the soft planes of his face; it doesn’t pull any stronger than a wounded bird dropping dead without a sound, but what it gives you tastes like a sugared pastry. 

mother locks her arm around your tiny shoulder and off you go, but your gaze lingers on finral’s bright emerald grimoire a moment longer than it should; it’s enough. It’s your brother’s hands clenching around the old tome, almost shielding it from your hard eyes, your spite, ever-gentle, even when skeptical, and it sets your skin alight like the sizzling Mana in his veins. He keeps giving you time, waiting. 

but time’s of no use to you. 

you want to rip his hands from his body. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


a child loved by mana does not need love through other means. you never seek adoration, it’s not part of who you are: what you seek is the disemboweled shape of that copper statue in the middle of the pool. your blackholes are terrible bites. 

but, come to think of it, bites bleed, while this power bears no such cruelty.

here’s wood, marble, iron, silver. 

there’s nothing you can’t undo. no material is resilient enough to outlast you, what mana weaves together, you can untie. could a power greater than this be accorded to humans? praise is never quite empty, it all draws back to etymology, an orchestra plays for destruction. what got assembled from scratch, a snap of your fingers can return to nothing. you penetrate the fabric of things, ending and unending, and you learn that nothing’s unbendable, nothing’s  _ forever _ . 

here’s gold, here’s flesh, here’s a person with two eyes like a bright, vast galaxy. you’ve never even believed in eyes so honest, and you’re thirteen, you ought to have some proper experience with the world outside the mansion. but you’re also a Vaude, and you don’t.

you’re facing another Vaude, and you think- just a flicker, but it’s there- you think he pities you.

  
“why would you think so highly of yourself,” your voice is vitriol when you break through his sorry silence. “were you hoping I would stop you from ridding this house of a burden? suit yourself. it pains me to call someone like you Brother.”

 

finral takes a step back, but there’s no sign of hurt on his face. if this is a definitive goodbye he doesn’t seem to process the full extent of ‘definitive.’ anything more than a shallow, archetypical sense of safety and relative amusement just flew over his head. you’d like to know him less than you do.

how do you unknow him? how do you outgrow him?

there’s not one thing you can’t undo.

 

“that’s understandable,” he says. other than taking in a steadying breath, he doesn’t do anything remarkable, like his script was tailored for a dramatically mundane life. “i’m sorry... we never saw eye to eye, did we?”

 

as if you had a chance to. you despise mundane, and he won’t live up to your legend. consideration, your consideration, is something he doesn’t deserve; yet he has the nerve to apologize. he doesn’t owe you an apology. he doesn’t owe you anything. that would mean he’s tied to you in some way. 

 

you bare your teeth and twist your right wrist, but your hands are still tingling, growing hotter and hotter, like they contain a rising tide. “i’m not interested in a tearful confrontation. go.”

 

“langris, I’m sorry-”

 

“don’t,” it comes out as a chuckle. the heat in your fingertips would melt a golden statue. 

 

“... see you again, langris.”

 

here’s a Brother. 

leaving like a disgraced heir, blood not unlike yours, his hair just a shade lighter, decidedly inching towards brown rather than red. red belongs to a wing of the royal family. you’d gut yourself rather than choose red. Gold boils in your blood, it’s embroidered in your pupils, drips from your tongue. 

you’ve always felt like you could reach inside yourself and brush your fingers on a small star, living, breathing, asleep. but you don’t own a grimoire yet, you don’t know what true power does to you- just the white-hot force of your blackholes in your palms. you know you’re someone’s Brother, but also something better, greater. Born to  _ crush _ . 

he’s the subsequent assemblement of many things you’d rather forget. you look at him and you see a sinkhole, and at the bottom, there’s a bird, it’s not quite dead and not quite broken. it’s just useless, unfit; not to mention its ridiculous tiny wings. naturally, birds who can’t fly ought to die one day or the other. nature takes no pity on them, so should you? Mana takes no pity.

 

here’s the difference between you and him:

Mana uplifts you. 

Mana bred you. 

Mana chose you. 

 

here’s a Brother. he’s not unbendable, he’s not forever. 

here’s proof that the Vaude name is not  _ forever _ . your brother lost any right to it when he walked out of the mansion; so this is it, he’s the outsider now. why does it feel like  _ you _ stand outside a door, then? you might as well do the bird a favor and kill it. no one cares for something outmatched, outlawed, incomplete.

  
  


Langris Vaude is your name. 

there’s nothing you can’t undo. 

you’re no one’s brother. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos make my day!  
> if you feel like nagging me about my boy langris or black clover in general i'm @nihilkolja on twitter and @chvvva on tumblr. please. 
> 
> again, i really hope you enjoyed this Nicole, and i wish you some awesome holidays.


End file.
